Vim removes mental load while typing. It won’t make you significantly faster, or even really a better programmer in any measurable way. What it does is make the

Vim removes mental load while typing. It won’t make you significantly faster, or even really a better programmer in any measurable way. What it does is make the experience of writing text, and especially writing code, far more pleasant. If I ever have to write something nowadays without vim, everything feels clumsy and imprecise. If I want to go back a couple of words and change something, I feel like I’m playing a timing minigame. I have to hold the left arrow key exactly the right amount of time. Most of the time I overshoot a couple of characters, and have to tap the right arrow key to get to the right spot. Now repeat the same timing minigame holding backspace. Ah crap I deleted too much better undo a couple of times. Now I can finally make my change. All of this is just unnecessary friction between your brain and the computer that anyone who hasn’t learned vim accepts as a fact of life, but it becomes completely intolerable after spending the time to learn.